After U-13 player clears stadium, PCB suspends tournament for age-fraud

Pakistan Cricket Board suspended its U13 and U16 amid age fraud concerns. Tensions had been looming for a while now with several associations believed to have fielded overage players.

ESPNcricinfo reported an incident where a U13 player had hit 11 sixes in a game, with one ball clearing the stadium. With the situation getting out of hands, PCB decided to take over and cancel the tournaments, a major part of their Pathways Programme and impose strict regulations.

PCB’s high performance director Nadeem Khan in a statement said that fresh bone tests will be conducted as overage cricketers cannot be allowed to take advantage of flaws in the system.

"After visual assessment confirmed that some over-age cricketers were participating in the U-13 and U-16 tournaments, suspending the events and conducting fresh bone age tests was absolutely the right thing to do," Nadeem said. 

"The PCB, as the sole governing body of cricket in Pakistan, cannot allow over-age cricketers to take advantage of the flaws in the system and cause demotivation and mental stress to deserving under-age cricketers as well as their parents.”

Controversy related to age fraud had risen its head recently in India as well, with BCCI’s chief medical officer resigning right ahead of the scheduled age-group tournaments. Later, BCCI had allowed overage players to participate in the tournaments but the competition had to be cancelled due to the rising numbers in third wave triggered by the Omicron variant.

Speaking about the situation Nadeem said that the age fraud issue had been plaguing Pakistan for quite a while now and it needs to be corrected right away.

"Falsifying age to become eligible to participate in age-group cricket is not only an offence but a menace that has been plaguing our system. This now needs to be corrected to protect the integrity of the tournaments as well as to stop the exodus of young talented cricketers."